


Stages of Grief

by Morgana



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-25
Updated: 2013-05-25
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:14:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgana/pseuds/Morgana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean Winchester went to Hell. Now his brother has to deal with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stages of Grief

**Author's Note:**

> The timeline's a little different in this, since I wanted to draw it out to really look at the stages of grief as Sam goes through them. So for purposes of this story, Dean spent a year in Hell.

Dean Winchester went to Hell on his brother's birthday. Sam cried and screamed and begged him to stay, but it was no use. Lilith's white light failed to kill him, failed to send him to join Dean, so she left him alone with what used to be Dean. He carried his brother out of the house and drove away to bury him. There was no hunter's pyre, no fire to cleanse his body and free his spirit, because there didn't need to be. Because Dean wasn't going to stay dead. Sam already knew that.   
  
Two months after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam refused to accept that he was gone. He talked to his brother as though he could hear him, he ordered food that went uneaten, bought drinks that sat next to his until he pushed away from the bar and left them behind, one full glass sitting next to two or three empty ones. He kept the radio tuned to his brother's favorite station and left the TV on the channels he knew he liked, even if it meant sometimes having to sit through stupid soap operas with vapid plots enacted by even more vapid starlets. He did everything possible to ignore the enormous gap that Dean's death had left in his life, trying frantically to pretend that his brother was still there, that if he only turned around fast enough, he'd see him sitting there and shaking his head at Sam for being stupid enough to think he was gone.  
  
Four months after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam killed Lilith. For taking his brother from him, she had to die, but more than that, she had to die painfully, to truly pay for her sins. She had touched that which he loved, laid claim to that which was his, and she could not be allowed to live, but he wasn't about to send her back to Hell to torture Dean, either. He tore her apart from the inside, his eyes bleeding black while hers glowed white before she was annihilated in a burst of heat that threw him back against the wall. He thought he saw a man approach him before he passed out, but when he woke up in his hotel room, he was alone, so he assumed it had been Ruby who had picked him up and brought him back.   
  
Six months after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam started trying to make a deal. He'd killed Lilith, so he assumed he was the de facto Prince of Hell - didn't that mean that  _somewhere_  out there,  _someone_  had to be willing to deal with him? Or even just hand Dean over without anything in return, that would work, too. But apparently his victory was destined to be bittersweet, because no matter how often he went to the crossroads, there was never any answer. And when there finally was, it was from a smarmy, well-dressed British asshole who informed Sam that none of his people would be making any deals with him, ever. He was still reeling from the casual effrontery of the demon when the thing vanished, leaving him without vengeance, without a deal, and worst of all, without Dean.  
  
Eight months after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam quit hunting. He stopped looking in the paper for stories, stopped tracking down leads, stopped calling Bobby back, just... stopped. One morning, he woke up in Deer Park and didn't bother to go out to the car, just called for pizza delivery and stayed in the room. Somehow, one day turned into three, and three days turned into five, and yet he still hadn't left the room for more than a couple hours at a time to get booze and food. Time slid by in a drunken haze, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered without Dean. Distantly, he knew Dean would be upset with him for quitting like this, knew he'd yell about Sam wasting his second chance at life, but he really couldn't bring himself to care. What good was a second chance when there was no Dean there to make sure he didn't fuck it up the way he had with his first shot?   
  
Ten months after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam drove out to his brother's grave. It wasn't hard to find it, even though it was just an unmarked cross in the woods, but then, he'd have been able to find these woods in his sleep. He took a sausage pizza (deep dish, extra cheese, light sauce) and a six pack of beer with him, and he laid both at the foot of the grave, then spent a long time staring at the cross. This was all that was left, the only sign that Dean had ever lived, walked the earth and died, except for Sam and the Impala, but he wasn't stupid enough to think that either he or the car would outlast the cross. It would be here long after the car was scrap metal and he was dust, and someday, someone would come across it and wonder who was buried there. He hoped they'd understand that Dean had been special, that they'd know he'd been loved. Sam knew he should talk to him, but he wasn't sure what to say. The words stuck in his throat, and eventually, he poured a beer out onto the grave, set a couple of pieces of pizza out on a napkin and left them there with an extra beer, then trudged back to the car.  
  
A year after Dean Winchester went to Hell, Sam was starting to think he might be all right, after all. And then an angel dragged his brother back up to earth and his whole world shattered all over again.


End file.
